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Unfriendly Climate Greets Gore At Apple Meeting
theodp writes "Apple's shareholder meeting this week took on a Jerry Springer vibe, with harsh comments about Al Gore, former VP and Apple board member, setting the tone. Several stockholders took turns either bashing or praising Gore's high-profile views on climate change. Apple shareholder Shelton Ehrlich urged against Gore's re-election to the board, claiming that Gore 'has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted. If [the] advice he gives to Apple is as faulty as his views on the environment then he doesn't need to be re-elected.' Hey, at least he moved a few copies of Keynote, Shelton. Shareholders introduced proposals regarding Apple's environmental impact — one asking Apple to commit publicly to greenhouse gas reduction goals and to publish a formal sustainability report; another proposing that Apple's board establish a sustainability committee. These proposals were rejected by shareholders. However, preliminary voting results indicated that Gore was re-elected to Apple's Board."
Al Gore must melt the glaciers to retain his position on Apple's board
If there's even the slightest chance global warming is a hoax, we should feel free to use as much energy and non-renewable resources as possible because we'll figure out a way to work around it when they're much more difficult to come by. You believe in technology and human ingenuity, don't you?
Clearly, Apple is trying to get rid of Linux as a competitor by melting the homes of penguins everywhere. Of course, they're not taking BSD into account...
Make sure you use biofuels for those flames, or purchase carbon offsets. Otherwise this thread will become a major contributor to global warming.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
IMPLEMENTING "GREEN" POLICIES ISN'T A GOOD BUSINESS DECISION.
Yeah, a lot of companies thought that way, and ended up polluting places, and then going out of business, leaving the rest of us to clean it up.
Not implementing "green" policies is a bad social decision.
I think Al Gore is a pretty cool guy. He saves the environment and doesn't afraid of anything.
One one side you have people who ignore scientific evidence for financial gain.
On the other side you have... those who ignore scientific evidence for financial gain.
Science got way lost in the middle of this whole debate. Indeed the very term "debate" is laughable, as it is currently a which hunt on both sides.
And you, sir, are not helping by demonizing those who think differently than you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Feilding, Campbell-Newman and a few other engineers that couldn't do it and got into politics are batshit insane but most of the rest of us are not.
The problem is we are turning into societies that love technology but really hate the underlying science. All the "don't tell me about it until I can buy it at Walmart" posts that are starting to infest this site are a symptom of that. They just want magic and are starting to think just talking about physical things can make them real instead of the process of people knowing how to do things and then making it real.
It's bad news that reality involves tradeoffs to make things fit and they never want to hear the bad news. We've had a century of nearly free energy with the tradeoff of altering the atmosphere, and various idiots would not believe that even if we could tell them what time it's going to rain tomorrow morning. Others demand to know details like that and do not understand that wide trends can be predicted without knowing to the second when it's going to start raining.
My typical argument with these people is,
Me: "So, God gave us dominion over the Earth, correct? He put us in charge of His creation?"
Them: "Yes."
Me: "So, if a parent told their children, 'We're going to be out for an hour. We're leaving you in charge of the house while we're goine,' and they came home and the house was burned down... how happy do you think they'd be with their children?"
The only way I would lionize Dick Cheney would be while he was still alive, and it would involve actual lions.
I don't understand the mocking and hostility of the opponents of climate-change theory toward the supporters.
Pretty simple, the naturally human instinct is payback for years of mockery. And indeed why should only one side be allowed vitrol and mockery and demand it not be turned against them when the tide of fate ebbs for them?
I don't think it's productive but it's understandable, and honestly well deserved.
Even if the theories are wrong, reducing green-house emissions (etc) won't hurt anything but the pocket book. I know this is no small thing, especially in the context of a global economy and global competition, but the consequences of ignoring things if man-made climate change is a reality are bad.
Do you believe in God? Because you have just stated you must. After all, the consequence for being wrong is fairly horrific since a lifetime here is nothing compared to an infinity of afterlife, right?
Such is the power of the Precautionary Principal which is what your argument relies upon.
Here is what I know from years of traveling the world. If you want to see true devastation, you have only to travel to where people are generally poor. It's hard to save a forest when millions are looking for firewood (see: Haiti).
So you claim we should look upon hurting people in an economic downturn as a small consequence to avert potential disaster, but all I can envision is a global environmental cataclysm as economies fall and people do what they do best - survive at any cost.
Far better to invest heavily in alternative energy now, like nuclear and solar, so that we can all get off the oil train. The chances of GW actually causing enough problems to really bother us all before we can make that happen are to my mind exceedingly low vs. the certainty of what happens when we make a whole lot of people poor.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
>> You do realize, they've been in decline for about the last 18k years, right? Since the last glacial period.
Quite the pedant. The GP poster wasn't talking about a very tiny decline.
No-one is trying to claim that the climate doesn't change. The problem is how quickly it is currently changing.
If the temperature had been increasing for the last 18k years as fast as it has risen for the last few decades, we'd currently be experiencing temperatures nearing the 300 degrees Celcius mark, and the glaciers would have long since melted.
Even if the theories are wrong, reducing green-house emissions (etc) won't hurt anything but the pocket book.
I think the problem is that that is the wrong approach. So many of the greenie eco-nuts seem to have this mindset that helping the environment means hurting ourselves, and that's where the problems start. Check it out:
We improve our energy grid with nuclear energy. We use the newest models, the ones that recycle the 'waste,' the only thing it releases into the enviroment is steam. That cuts out all the nasty of coal. Meanwhile, we research solar to make it more usable than it is now. That makes energy cheaper, which helps manufacturing ect. and improves the economy.
We really need to develop an alternative to oil. Either hydrogen power, or a biofuel, and not corn, something decent, like desert based enclosed algae farms. Once a suitable solution is found, we put it into mass production. This cuts off the huge amounts of money we send to foreign oil sources, and if it works well enough, cuts the cost of travel & shipping, and may even provide an export, possibly cuts off terrorism funding, which really improves the economy.
We improve our agriculture. We diversify our crops, do improvement work to breed commercially viable species of new crops, which will reduce the amount of inputs that are needed to keep crops pest and disease free. We develop and grow more locally adapted varieties of traditional crops, and grow the new ones in the best possible areas. In both cases, use techniques like intercroping and crop rotation to further reduce the need for inputs like pesticides and fertilizers. In all cases, we develop new traits that can be inserted via genetic engineering to further reduce inputs and increase yields, as well as open up previously inariable land for cultivation. This lowers food prices, might even increase overall health, and improves the economy.
Certainty, of course, it must be stated that regulation must happen, but whether AGW is real or not, who wants to be breathing in smoke and drinking polluted water anyway? Again, rather than saying 'Waah, industry!' what we need to do is ask, 'How can we develop cost effective solutions to maintain air/water quality without a significant decrease in business?'
We need to get over this mindset that green technology and green lifestyles must by necessity hurt the economy. We don't need to go back to the caves, we need to go back to the labs. Green technology is good for the economy. Greenie technology, on the other hand, the feel good hippy-dippy stuff, that's another story, but if done right, there is no problem whatsoever. Everybody wins. If man is causing global warming, this is what we should do, and even if it isn't us, we should do this sort of stuff anyway. What we should do is clear. That there is a political controversy is just baffling.
Remember for how long the tobacco industry denied that their was a health risk to smoking? Oh they were so happy to point out all the old people who smoked and still had gotten old, surely that proved how wrong all the scientist were and that there scientist who got their paycheck from them were right.
Or car safety. No sir, seatbelts kill people.
Look at Mythbusters, just how many stupid myths people want them to investigate over and over because they just want to believe some silly idea. Using a net in your pickup truck to safe fuel... IF that is going work, it only works in an empty truck AND one that doesn't need the door... so why have you got a pickup truck then? You drive a three ton vehicle with huge wasted space and worry about saving a few nickels.
One simple example of how denialists think, is that they have leaped on "global warming" rather then "global climate change". It is easier, anytime it snows you can shout "see, the world ain't getting warmer". Climate change is harder to debunk because ordinary farmers can tell you about it. Just a few more days of rain, or less can ruin a crop. And our western society isn't based on our universities, it is based on our farms. Farms that put plenty of food in our bellies, so much that very clever people can think very clever ideas and still think milk comes from a carton. The more intelligent a creature the less time it spends hunting for food == the less time hunting for food, the more intelligent you can become.
But what if the climate does happen to change? It could radically shift were what types of food can be grown. You might think grain is just about putting a seed in the ground and coming back half a year later to mow it, but it is a delicate process. A frost at the wrong time, not enough rain at some point, to much at another, can ruin the crop.
Right now, in the west we are incredible luck. A man can feed himself well for an entire day with about ONE hour of work, even on low pay. Say that prices double, what effect would that have on our society? Less money to spend on education, less money on healthcare. Less money to spend on taxes to fund the country as a whole.
People can understand that if the planet had just a slightly different orbit it would be a desolate place like mars or venus. But they don't understand that those two weeks of warm dry weather in fall are more then just a nice end to the summer, they are the time farmers need to make hay. No hay, no cheap cattle food for the winter, means that other places must grow the food that costs more and can't grow human food.
But hey, as long as you can drive your 3 ton pickup truck that never picks anything up, you can deny all you want. Just like a smoker with only 1 lung left and no larynx denies that there is anything wrong with smoking.
And really, the entire problem is just as with smoking, by the time we got the absolute evidence (you died from a tar lung) it really is to late.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Shareholders Care More About Bottom Line Than Environment.
Film at 11.
You mean this one?
Why yes, I have. You quite obviously have not or you wouldn't have come up with this bullshit:
This can only be described as a blatant lie, given that when the BBC asked him "How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?", his reply was actually: